Rumourmill: Players Banned For AFKing

Yes, I am putting this under rumourmill despite giving out a warning on this very site to not AFK in case this should happen to you.

In case you are unaware, there is a rumour going about that players are moved behind the glass in the lobby and then reported for hacking. This results in their accounts being banned from the game.

What Is Not A Rumour

There are hackers about and they can move characters. The updated terms of service prevent me from sharing details, but the people most at risk are people AFK in the lobbies. The victim is also the only person who wouldn’t know they were moved. If you’re moving, you are at no risk whatsoever.

You can probably see the potential is that people may be moved somewhere unreachable and then other players would see them as hackers and report them. The hacker themselves could also send in reports theoretically.

What Is A Rumour

People have been banned for this

This however, does fall under rumour. Yes, there are a number of posts by people who claim this has happened to them, but none of them seem to stand up to scrutiny.

For one thing, if this really were the case and Sega were acting on such reports don’t you think more people would have been affected by this? As it stands, I can count the number of reported incidents with one hand.

The people who post the “I GOT BANNED” threads don’t seem to post any messages that they received from Sega about their ban. You’d think that would be self-explanatory given that they’re playing a game in a language they can’t understand but there’s a problem with this. One of the first such posts actually included information that they got a 3-day temporary ban, which indicates that Sega may let people know the nature of their punishment. It’s possible they post more information too, so why are they electing not so show this in their posts? You’d think that someone confused about the nature of their ban may post the contents of such a message (with necessary ommisions) asking for a translation from the forum. Or at least posting whatever Google Translate poops out. As it is now, we have no idea if the players in these posts were temporarily banned, permanently banned or what.

This last is more food for thought than anything, as I have no physical proof of them doing it. But, have you ever been to Block 20? People post some obscene symbol arts. I’ve seen pornographic symbols, racist symbols and less offensively just plain cuss words in symbols. All these things are against the terms of service and if a GM happened to see your account posting something like that or if another player reports you for it, it could well end up with you getting banned. Having an offensive name for your character could also result in a ban.

So should I AFK in the lobbies seeing as all these guys were lying?

No and I’m not saying they’re all liars. Claims require evidence and I lack as much evidence as they do.

All this post is for is to illustrate said lack of evidence that anything is happening to any player that got moved outside the lobby window. If such evidence were to crop up, I would eat humble pie and curse Sega of Japan for being so stupid about the way they’re handling this situation.

Said lack of evidence could actually be harmful, too. If Sega are banning players for this and there is sufficient proof, an effort could theoretically be attempted to try to get Sega to realise that they may be banning innocent players. Without evidence, that can’t happen. Of course, acquiring said evidence isn’t easy. It requires screenshots of the victims outside the window for a start (remembering that they naturally won’t be taking it themselves).

However, Sega can be quite dumb when they want to be. It IS possible that this is more than a rumour, so the advice is unchanged. Err on the side of caution, do not AFK in lobbies.

You won’t get banned if you use the Cash Shop. Only F2Pers get banned!

This is completely unfounded. Spending money in the cash shop does not mean the rules no longer apply to you, it’s ridiculous to think otherwise.

You’ll get banned if you spend money in the cash shop!

Yes, always the best business plan to ban your customers for giving you money. Of course this clashes with the previous rumour and also feeds off the assumption that because many used fake addresses in order to buy Arks Cash they’ll get banned because of it. Yes it’s against the terms of service, but people have been using fake addresses since PSU and possibly before and no one has been banned because of it. Sega like money

You are autobanned if 5 or more reports are sent in about you

This is again, also completely unfounded but not impossible. If such a system exists though, ask yourself how do the people who say this is definitely the case know about it? If they’re a victim of banning how could they possibly know how many reports were sent in about them? Are they the ones doing the reporting?

Conclusion

Don’t just take people on their word that they got banned because of this. They might have, but there’s a considerable lack of evidence that says this is definitely happening.

There needs to be more information posted about the nature of the ban if you yourself were. Do Sega send a message do your account’s email explaining why you were banned? Do they tell you the duration? Were you definitely just AFKing in the lobbies or, really ask yourself, did you do anything you probably shouldn’t have?

Also, if you’re going to AFK, do it in the Camp Ship or in your room. Or better yet, log out of your game and save some money on your electricity bills.

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2 thoughts on “Rumourmill: Players Banned For AFKing”

I dunno bout the rest of you but this makes me really paranoid.
I’ve completely stopped Going to block 20/21/22 cause I don’t wanna get banned for doing nothing wrong. However this means its really hard for me to find a party… Stupid hackers ruining the game.
I can’t stand in the lobby one second without thinking “oh someone might hack me better keep moving.”
Am I too paranoid?
Anyways until I hear something from Sega saying “we fixed the hacks!!” I’m staying away from the popular blocks…

k my fiance keeps getting a 606 error code saying unable to authenticate user id and password. we changed emails/passwords and can log her into the sega id site to do such things as change the security questions and everything else but it still wotn let her log into the game. is there a server delay for changed passwords? did she get her account hacked? what does this mean? if i cant resolve this problem soon im about to give up on pso and i would really hate to do that this game is awesome. but if there are these problems on the japanese servers you can bet they will be worse on the US/EU servers…. also my team says they saw her logged in around 7 in the morning…. while we were both asleep…. so thats the reason i am guessing that it may be account info being stolen. didnt respond to the team members or anything. any help even if you think its a stupid idea please post it cause im running out of options.